Control room for farmers

In a bid to assuage the farming community in the time of army worms menace Assam agriculture department has set up a control room in Guwahati.

Officials told Assam Times that the control room would help the farmers control the attack of army worms in the crops lands. A joint director would run the control room  where the  farmers can contact the authority with mobile number 9854338572 and 94355 43404.

According to a government statement, armyworms are caterpillars that crops belonging to rice  (particularly Gramineae). There are three armyworm species which are the rice swarming caterpillar, common cutworm, and the rice ear-cutting caterpillar. A single armyworm egg mass contains hundreds of eggs and each female lays 800−1000 eggs during its lifetime of about one week. The name armyworm is applied to those species that migrate in masse to neighboring fields after severely defoliating a crop.

Armyworm feeds on paddy leaves and young seedlings at the plant's base. They also cut off rice from base, it said.